Stillborn Sheep Looks Way Too Human For Comfort

BAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

A sheep farmer helps a ewe give birth. Photo: James Ross (Getty).

Remember all that sleeping you were going to do tonight? Well, if counting sheep is your method of choice, it might be time rethink everything.

You seldom see something that makes you think it’s OK to be DOA, but this is certainly in the realm. According to villagers in South Africa’s Lady Frere, a “half-human half-beast” was “sent by the devil” recently in the form of a sickly, diseased baby sheep. Convince that the creature was the product of either witchcraft, bestiality, or both, the Eastern Cape Department of Rural Development was called in to do a little research. And with good reason. Look, we’d be thinking the same thing as these people if we saw what you are about to look at in person:

Stillborn Sheep Looks Way Too Human For Comfort

Photo: CEN

Photo: CEN

Photo: CEN

So, at this point, any rational person wants to know the real explanation. Well there’s a perfectly complicated one according to Chief Director of Veterinary Services Dr. Lubabalo Mrwebi:

We can confirm this not a hoax photo but that the severely deformed lamb was born by a sheep in Lady Frere this week which at a glance resembles a human form.

It is not however human but a deformed stillborn lamb sired by a sheep and was subsequently infected by a Rift Valley Fever at an early stage of its pregnancy.

The deformed lamb exhibits signs that are consistent with an early foetal development that went wrong as a result of a viral infection and nothing more